“Regardless of whether a child living in poverty wants to learn, regardless of whether she’s determined to make the best life for herself, she must first overcome barriers to life’s basic needs- the kinds of needs that the middle-class people, including most professional educators, usually take for granted: access to healthcare; sufficient food and lodging; reasonable safe living conditions” (Gorski 1). Upon reading Gorski, I started to remember a time in my life when I first started to recognize how many lives are changed because of class. When I was in eighth grade, my sister who was in seventh grade had a best friend who my family grew to love. She would come over for the day, but her mother would never come to pick her up. My parents would ask her when her mother was coming, and after seeing the girl frantically trying to reach her mother, they offered to bring her home.
We lived in a nice suburban town with only a few homes of obvious low income. Her house's porch had half-fallen off, the roof was covered in moss, and the driveway looked like a junkyard. We later found out her white mother was a prostitute at the nearby casinos and her black father had been incarcerated since she was an infant. She had dreams of going to college and becoming much more than what she was born into. My parents took her and her younger sister in for about a year after the mother signed away custody as her addictions and threatening life prevented her from taking care of herself, let alone her children. They each owned less than three outfits; their eyes widened at the glance of a home cooked meal.
These things seem so far fetched to even the middle-class, but are all around us. How could we as a society let this happen to our future? We always think that these scenarios are not happening in our neighborhood; they would never happen to a child. Gorski argues that we need to stop blaming those in poverty, and try to get an understanding of what it is like to be poor. When children of poverty see these negative views towards poverty, they may start to feel like they are the problem, and that they are stuck in poverty, giving up their motivation. Both girls are now attending college, but without the their inner drive and my parents' encouragement and support, who knows if they too would have fallen into the vicious cycle of poverty.
Our friend had fallen through the cracks. She had never heard of financial aid or scholarships. She loved to read, but never had books, and was to embarrassed to ask for help finding the ones she wanted at the school library. We all went to the same school; how could this be? I had learned these things at school. My parents told me to find scholarship opportunities, and I did through utilizing the school's career center. The librarians taught me how to find a book with the Dewey decimal system then I was taught how to use the computer generated system multiple times in my education. Was I taught a hidden curriculum as Anyon suggests?
“Bowles and Gintls (1967), for example, have argued that students from different social backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behaviors that correspond to personality traits allegedly rewarded in different occupational strata- the working classes for docility and obedience, the managerial classes for initiative and personal assertiveness” (Anyon 67). This made me wonder what were the class giveaways? Was it the difference in our skin tones, clothing, or confidence? It could even be all of these, or something completely different. Somehow I was privileged and so was my family, but her family spiraled downwards from the start. Her black father seemed to never have been given a chance as the United States is quick to lock up black males once they are seen as "problematic". Her single mother was on her own with two infants and little opportunity. She tried all that she could, but the employment she was forced into consumed her. I was always encouraged to ask questions; to voice my opinion. The other girl was shy and timid when it came to seeking assistance. I know she paid attention in school; were these aspects of cultural capital given to me, but not to her? It seems as if her teachers had assumed she would never go to college, and did not bother to teach her these skills. How could this happen in a "land of equal opportunity"?
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